Legacy

You know where I'm going with this post, don't you?

There has been so much high-profile death in the past two weeks - Ed McMahon, MJ, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, Karl Malden, even our beloved Mrs. Slocombe, Mollie Sudgen, from Are You Being Served? - lots of famous people have died, y'all.

And, as I was thinking about Sudgen's death while I was at choir practice Wednesday night (don't judge me for not paying attention - all we did was listen to the Christmas musical he's picked) I started thinking about legacies.

My legacy, and that of my family as a whole.

What will people say about me, and about my family, when I'm gone? Will people think about the good things - like some have tried to do with MJ, remember how awesomely talented he was, and not the allegations of the 1990's and the abject creepiness of his adult years? Will they remember Jason and me as people who did what needed to be done, who could always be counted on?

The only people who really know what life is like in the Turner house are Jason, Anna Marie, and me. What is she going to remember about her parents, about our marriage and our life, when she's an adult and we're no longer here? Have we done a sufficient job of teaching her what is important to us as a family, and what we feel that the Bible teaches us is important in God's sight?

While it would be nice for my obit to include the words "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist" that's probably not going to happen. And seriously, my career is not the most important thing in my life. It never has been, and I hope it never will be. The most important legacies that I'm crafting right now are in my marriage and how I'm raising my daughter. Those are the things we leave behind, even more than the words I write or the songs I sing, or the things I've collected over the years.

I want Anna Marie to be proud of her parents, to think of us as honorable, Godly people. I want to be the kind of person who can be depended on, not one who "talks a good game" but doesn't deliver.

I want to leave a positive, Godly legacy behind when I'm gone. What about you?